


Life Until Death

by sugarboat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Monster Bill Cipher, Oral Sex, Other, Size Difference, Tentacle Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:58:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ford awakens on the other side of the portal, alone save for his regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Until Death

**Author's Note:**

> I started this before Journal 3 came out, so it doesn't exactly jive with what we now know. Oh well! :)

His ears were filled with the tinny ringing of silence. In turns, his body felt: numb, tingly, bruised, aching. Rinse, repeat, again. When he opened his eyes, he saw darkness and when he closed them his mind replayed his memories. Stan falls against the machine, grimaces against his charring flesh. Rinse, repeat, again. Gravity inverts itself, his glasses threaten to float off his face. Rinse, repeat, again. He throws the book – _his journal_ – the last effort of a doomed man. Rinse, repeat, again. The world he knew closes in front of him, shrinks to a singular point of shining light and then blips out of existence.

Rinse, repeat, again.

Stanford didn’t know where he was, or how long he had been there. Conscious thought would drift in and out. He could remember his eyes flickering open, greeted by a world of fuzzy darkness and indistinct shapes. Pain followed close like the old friend it was, licking at his body – legs, arm, _head_ – and he would drift, close his eyes and let his mind carry him away. It was just like meditating, like dreaming, like-

_Bill._

Terror coursed through him and this was finally what had him moving, muscles twitching as if they were no longer under his control. Were they not? His heart was beating frantically in his chest, but he felt removed from it. _Had Bill- was this_ \- but his hand came in front of his face at his command, six fingers wiggling in unsynchronized disorder. Ford released a sigh of relief, surprised to find his lungs were burning with the need for oxygen, wondering when he had begun to hold his breath. His thoughts were frayed and racing, a million check lists fighting for prominence.

He tried to calm down. His fingers twitched in front of him, one by one, counting off. Breathe in. Pause. Breathe out. _Don’t think about Bill._ Breathe in - air into your head, clear out your mind – breathe out. _Bill taught you this._ Breath in – deep into your chest, into your soul – breathe out. _Don’t think about Bill._ Fiber by fiber, Ford could feel his muscles uncoiling, lengthening. Lulled by the deep, even pace of his breathing, his heart slowed to a crawl, and when he concentrated he could hear the dull whispering of coursing blood in his ears. 

_All right. Stanford Pines. You’ve wasted enough time._

Grunting with effort, Ford hauled his body into a sitting position. His skull felt as though it was going to split from pressure and he grimaced, pressing his fingers and thumb to his temples until the pain only came in rushes timed to his heartbeat. He rubbed his face – no glasses – and continued the gesture into his hair, paused just the below the crown of his head, where the strands became damp and clotted together. A head injury. 

His left arm throbbed with garbled pain; he must have landed on it when he… fell? Wincing, he turned his hand to face the ground, dug into the sifting dirt with his fingers. Coarse and rough, a consistency close to the beaches he’d explored with Stanley a lifetime ago. A memory suddenly flickered to life in his mind: the first time he’d set foot in Gravity Falls, elated to be free and on his own, thinking _this is the farthest I’ve ever been from home_. It had felt like an adventure, back then.

Fingers splayed, searching, Ford fumbled in the dark for his glasses. Dirt and grit stuck to the tacky liquid coating his right hand. His eyes had finally adjusted to the oppressive gloom of… wherever he was. Some kind of cave? There was a humid quality to the air, hinting that there must be some water source nearby. And was it his mind playing tricks on him, still caught in a nostalgic haze, or was that the briny scent of salt in the air, the rhythmic sound of waves breaking on a beach?

It was funny how senses could take one back in time. If he closed his eyes – incrementally increased the darkness swallowing him – he could almost feel the heat of the New Jersey sun on the back of his neck. In that distant sound, he could imagine the croaking of gulls, their shadows tossed to the ground far below them, swooping and circling. That smell of salt, the promise of hot summer days spent exploring and wrestling and dreaming. Maybe he could pretend that he was in one of those caverns they had found dotted along the seaside, pretend that he could at any moment choose to turn around and go home again.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t go back home even if he wanted to.

His hand jerked automatically back as his fingers ran over a new texture. Ford gingerly reached back out, felt out the familiar lines of his glasses. A small smile came to his face that left his cheeks aching – had it been so long since he had last smiled? Weeks, at least. He sat back on his heels, absently brushing the debris off his glasses, rubbing the lenses against the battered material of his shirt. That wasn’t important anymore. 

What was important was putting a stop to Bill’s plans, and to do that he had to figure out where he was, and where he needed to go. Ford felt slightly renewed with whatever tentative sense of purpose he could coalesce, and he pushed up with his hands and knees to drag himself to a standing position. A rush of lightheadedness greeted him and then faded away, and Ford cleared his throat just to make some kind of sound. He brushed off his pants legs, though he was certain the action accomplished nothing.

When lost in a cave, the most prudent advice was typically to wait to be found. However, in this particular situation – as in many others he had found himself in while traipsing through Gravity Falls – it was unlikely anyone was going to be searching for him. Or if they were, it was even more unlikely they would ever find him. That left him with little other choice than to blindly choose a direction, and hope for the best. With all options seeming equal, Ford chose to head towards the faint drum of the sea. If worse came to worse, and what he was hearing was nothing more than the echoes of a fond memory, well, at least he was doing _something_.

Walking in the dark was never an experience he enjoyed – phantom pains of bruised shins and toes that felt like they were broken. He took shuffles more than steps forward, arms bent to sweep the air before him, just in case he was headed towards a wall or stalagmite. Years of monster hunting had honed his senses, made him acutely aware of every stray rock he sent scattering, every creak and crack of his joints. His bruised and battered muscles tensed, locking into hard knots.

Every minute that he didn’t encounter anything, Ford felt more on edge. Even so, he was bolstered by the reverberations of the coast steadily increasing. There was a dim silver light coming from its direction as well, signaling that Ford must be approaching the entrance – or at least an opening – to the cavernous depths he’d lost himself in. His steps became bolder as his vision improved, finding nothing in front of him but dark, coarse sand and surrounded by slick, craggy stone walls. The floor tilted gently upwards, and just above the curve of it he could see the night sky, twinkling stars and shining moon, and it urged him onwards, faster towards the unknown.

An ocean greeted him, dark and vast, lapping gently at the rocky entrance of the cave. A moon, luminous and large – too large – hung in the air above the horizon, cast a glittering reflection of itself against the waters. Ford stared at it, mind whirling, and he imagined it splintering down the center, forming an eye, forming a mouth, coming to consume him. His heart was racing again, pounding in his temples, and he shook his head as if he could shake loose his paranoid thoughts.

Ford took a few steps forward, trying to wash down the bitter taste of panic, tamp down the trembling in his limbs. It was completely irrational – borderline delusional. Bill couldn’t be here. This certainly wasn’t the nightmare realm, wasn’t the realm that just a glimpse of had been enough to shake Fiddleford’s faith. As long as he was awake, he was safe. The muse – no; demon, demon – might return to haunt his sleeping hours, but his waking ones were free. 

He was sure he was awake... wasn’t he? Ford had stopped trusting his own senses, couldn’t rely on his eyes and ears or even his pain to prove what was dream and what was reality. He felt vertigo looming somewhere nearby, as if he was feet away from a precipice, just a long look down away from dizziness. The effect was compounded as he saw part of the ocean bloat, swelling as if some mammoth creature was about to emerge, before settling back to its original height. Eyes straining, he stared at the water. Had it been his imagination? A trick of the light?

Long minutes passed. If it hadn’t reappeared by now, it wasn’t going to. But then what if the moment he turned away was the moment it chose to resurface? Every time he attempted to convince himself it had just been his mind playing tricks on him, Ford would find it impossible to look away. He suddenly chuckled, shoulders sagging. He really was losing it, wasn’t he? Well, it was to be expected, he was in another _dimension_ -

His thoughts were cut off as the water swelled upwards again, this time much closer to the shoreline he was standing on. The chuckle died in his throat, next to where his heart had leapt. Ford’s jaw clenched, his hands balled so tightly into fists he could feel his fingernails digging crescents into the flesh of his palms. Every line of his body was fraught with tension, and when he was sure the waves had settled once more he carefully began to back away, eyes never leaving the sea but this time flickering back and forth over its dancing surface.

The shoreline erupted in a spray of saltwater, and Ford only had a moment to try and process what exactly had just burst forth from the deeper waters. He saw eyes, too many eyes; a head like an eel, elongated mouth opening in an ear-splitting wail, showing off rows and rows of glistening fangs. There were tendrils drifting to twist in the air surrounding it, and legs scrambling across the rocks, a serpentine and segmented body, and then Ford had to turn away and run, even as part of his mind was murmuring _fascinating_.

For the amount of bulk the creature was hauling around, it was moving swiftly. He glanced over his shoulder, stomach dropping when he saw how close the monstrosity was to him. It felt as though his entire body was covered in layered bruises; every part of him ached at the intensity of movement he was forced into. Ford grit his teeth, ignored the burning of his lungs and the stabbing tightness along his ribs.

He was soon barreling blindly back into the darkness of the cave. Some part of the creature was giving off an ethereal glow, lighting the way just enough that Ford could keep from stumbling into a wall, though the finer details of their environment were lost. The eerie blue light was reminiscent of the angler fish, Ford thought, and he wondered if this creature’s source of bioluminescence was the result of the same type of symbiobacterial relationship.

A rush of air against his back, another bellowing shriek, broke his chain of thought. The awful sound gave him such a start that he actually tripped, landing hard on the rough floor. He turned onto his back, unable to regain his footing. Scrambling backwards in the sand, Ford tried to put as much distance between himself and the glowing creature as he could, to no avail. It darted to his side and lunged forward, sinking its long teeth into the middle of his thigh. Ford let out a sharp cry. 

Frantically, his hands clawed at the beast’s head, trying to find some way to dislodge it from the meat of his thigh. The thing relaxed its jaws, teeth pulling out of the wounds it had inflicted. Something inside its mouth – many somethings – began to squirm at the edges of his torn flesh, like proboscises searching for blood. Ford punched the creature in one of its many distended eyes, grinning viciously at the high pitched shrill of pain it released in response.

The beast disengaged entirely, dropping his leg and retreating. Ford stared after it, flabbergasted. One punch was all it took? Well perhaps it was like the spiders and snakes of his dimension, skittish and uninterested in prey that fought back. Slowly, it dawned on Ford that his vision should be fading as his only light source – the creature – scurried out of view. But he was basking in a golden light, and some part of his mind shouted _daylight._

“WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL-WELL-WELL.” It was not daylight. 

Ford jerked around, mouth hanging open. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes. The image before him didn’t change. Bill was there, Bill was _here._ But how was that possible? His leg gave a mind numbing throb of pain, as if to assure him that he was awake. 

“If it isn’t my OLD PAL, STANFORD PI-”

“What you doing here?!” Ford interrupted. Bill glared, crossing his arms. “You can’t be here, it’s not- it’s not possible!”

“WHAT’S not possible?” Bill said. The annoyance at being interrupted seemed to have vanished.

“You! Being _here!_ This isn’t the nightmare realm!”

“Oh, it’s not?” Bill said this as if it was news to him.

“After I shut down the portal, I scrambled the coordinates. It may have connected to another dimension, but the odds that it reconnected to yours are astronomical! It’s statistically impossible!” 

“Well, it looks like you made a MISTAKE then, doesn’t it! But don’t SWEAT IT, Fordsy; as a GREAT MIND once said, sometimes SCIENCE is more ART than SCIENCE!” Ford scoffed at the idea – he hadn’t made a mistake, he knew what he had done. But then, he had been sleep deprived for the better part of a month by the time Stanley had so bullheadedly knocked him into that portal. And what was that last part?

“A great mind?” Ford repeated flatly; he couldn’t imagine any of the scientific figures in human history having said anything along those lines.

“Yeah, that guy was a REAL piece of WORK, let me tell you. Took my QUANTUM TUNNELING designs and made his OWN thing with them!” Bill looked like he was still nursing a grudge over the incident. “Jokes on HIM, though – that thing’s giving HIM and everyone around it CANCER!” The demon cackled as though this was a great prank. 

“Bill…” Ford’s voice deepened, sounding dangerous. “Is our portal giving everyone back home cancer?”

“What! No! Well, maybe,” Bill said dismissively. “Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about it Sixer! I’m going to do MUCH WORSE to everyone you love when I get through that rift! And besides, that’s like, what, 2, 3 people tops?” 

Fear and anger – _and humiliation and hurt and betrayal and broken trust_ – whirled together in his mind, each prompting the other higher in a positive loop. His jaw clenched, his teeth ground together. He refused to let that isosceles monster goad him like this. Ford’s eyes suddenly lit up as a realization hit him, and he gave Bill a smile that was completely devoid of amusement or affection.

“I think you mean _if_ , Cipher!” Ford gloated. The demon stared at him blankly, eerily still. “Now that I’m on this side of the portal, there isn’t anyone left to reactivate it! I may be trapped here, but so are you!”

Bill laughed, vanishing and reappearing right in front of Ford’s face. “It’s CUTE that you THINK THAT, Sixer!” Backing off, the demon floated around to his side, leaning an arm against Ford’s shoulder. “I have to ADMIT, your PLAN was INGENIOUS – we BOTH know how idiotic your BROTHER is, there’s NO WAY he could figure out how the engine runs on his own.”

“Precisely-”

“BUT!” Bill grabbed Ford’s chin in a bruising grip, talons digging into the skin of his cheeks. He forced the man to turn his head and look at him. “We ALSO both know how CLINGING and PATHETIC he is! Why, I can hear him right now! ‘You left me behind _again_ you jerk! I’m comin’ in there after you!’” Ford flinched as if struck – Bill’s voice had become a perfect imitation of his brother’s, echoing some of the last words Stanley had yelled at him. “Don’t you think he’d try ANYTHING – make a DEAL with **ANYONE** -” Bill’s eye flashed that hideous arctic blue, free hand wreathed in flames. “-to get you back?”

It felt like he’d swallowed a bucket of ice water, gut clenching – empty – around a tight ball of panic. Of course, he’d been so thoughtless; if Bill could play someone like him for a fool, a walking mass of jealousy and insecurity like his brother would be child’s play. A small part of him withered, felt ashamed for thinking of Stanley in such a way but – well, it was true, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t do any good to ignore the obvious or skirt around the issue.

“Aw, RELAX Fordsy, I’m just YANKING your CHAIN! No need to add any more FROWN LINES to that GRUMPY face of yours!” Bill put a hand on either side of Ford’s face, squishing it together. He laughed when Ford swung at him, drifting back out of reach. “Besides, why would I want the IMITATION Pines when I’ve got the REAL DEAL right here! You’re SUPERIOR to your brother in every way, all the way down to the number of FINGERS on your hands! Not many people can say that!” 

As much as Ford hated Bill, he hated himself more for the light thrill of pleasure that the demon’s words of praise sent singing through him. Bill laughed, as though he knew the cascading thoughts racing through his head. Actually, he probably did. It burned like a hot poker pressed to his insides to know Bill could read him so easily, had had him pegged long before he’d held out his hand and invited the demon into his mind. 

_And yet_ , a traitorous voice in the back of his mind whispered, _he’s seen everything you are and he still wants you._ It was a feeling he had gotten drunk off of so often in the past, replaying the praises Bill sang over and over in his head. All seeing, all knowing, all his flaws and weaknesses, his strengths and abilities – and Ford had thought Bill wanted all of that, all of him. The demon had pinned him down and opened him up, reached inside him deeper than anyone else ever had or could, left him in shattered pieces around his most vulnerable insides, pulled the darkest and brightest cores of himself to the surface-

And spit on them. Exposed them, flayed them and left them bleeding, rotting, rotten inside and outside. Ford felt it, felt gutted. He was still trying to mend the mangled remnants Bill had left behind, still trying not to think about how good it had felt when Bill had pulled him apart in the first place. 

Still trying to remind himself that Bill didn’t want _him_ , only wanted to _use_ him. 

“Can it, Bill! I’m not interested in hearing any more of your empty promises.” Ford tried to make his voice as steady as he didn’t feel.

“Oh, Sixer, they weren’t ALL empty,” Bill said, his voice practically a purr. The sound had Ford’s mind reeling back to endless nights spent in the mindscape, strung up and strung out, his mouth suddenly dry. “And it’s ENTIRELY up to YOU what happens from here on out!” 

“Entirely up to me?” Bill’s eye narrowed at his skeptical tone. But then the demon rolled his eye, arms moving up in a shrugging motion.

“Okay, you GOT ME, not ENTIRELY! What kind of CON-MAN would I BE if there wasn’t a little FINE PRINT attached!” It was infuriating the way Bill could claim the title so casually, as if his manipulation was nothing but light hearted fun. Ford wanted to rip his bulbous eye out. 

“I’m through playing your games,” Ford ground out. Bill’s eye widened in mock surprise.

“Giving up already? You know, choosing not to PLAY just means you **LOSE**.” The stone walls around them trembled, dirt shaken loose from the ceiling falling into Ford’s hair. Bill had flared an angry red, but regained his carefree countenance almost immediately. “Hmm, I can see why you might not be INCLINDED to join in! After all, I didn’t EXACTLY give you the full rulebook LAST TIME! So what do you say we LEVEL OUT the playing field?”

“What kind of a fool do you take me for, Cipher?” God, Ford could feel the thick vein at his temple, pounding in pain and anger.

“…Do you really want me to answer that?” For some reason that, of all things, was the last straw. With a frustrated noise, Ford lunged at the triangle, well aware the probability of him actually landing a hit was low, but overcome with the need to try. 

As expected, Ford encountered nothing but air with his grasping arms, and earned himself nothing but a sharp pang of pain from the wound circling his thigh. Floating somewhere high above him, Bill was cracking up like Ford had just told the best joke he’d ever heard. The man closed his eyes in anticipation of thudding into the ground, only to open them a moment later when the impact never came. He was hovering gently just off the sandy floor of the cavern, as though someone had momentarily turned off gravity.

He could easily guess who might have done _that_.

A black hand reached out, took a firm grip on his shoulder, and yanked him backwards. Ford found himself spilling back right side up, ended up floating almost horizontally, staring up into Bill’s face. The demon was smiling – grinning – and the expression sent another rush of anger through him. 

“I was just kiddin’, Fordsy! Man, you really CAN NOT take a JOKE right now! Is it cause you’re stressed out? Need a spa day?” Bill laughed again at the annoyed growl that greeted his words. “Okay, okay, I can see you’re in a bad mood. STILL, that’s no reason to not AT LEAST listen to my offer!”

Concentrating on learning how to maneuver himself in zero-gravity, Ford presented nothing but a heavy sigh and an exasperated glare to counter Bill’s words. 

“Oh, giving me the silent treatment? Well that’s FINE! All you need to do is pay attention, IQ!” Bill maneuvered so that he was floating alongside Ford, the effortless control serving to aggravate the man even further. “Listen, I can tell you want to STOP ME, it’s practically the only thought circulating in that STUNNING brain of yours! And let’s face it, you didn’t stand a CHANCE before – I made SURE of that!

“But NOW we’re both on the SAME PAGE! Don’t you wanna see if you can OUTSMART me in a fair fight?” Loath as he was to admit it, Bill’s words were igniting something within Ford. With Bill holding all the chips, Ford had automatically been put two steps behind every step of the way. The idea of actually testing his mettle against Bill was intoxicating. Now that the demon had brought it up, Ford couldn’t stop running it over in his head. 

“Why, I’ll even patch this up for you! Isn’t that nice?” As he spoke, Bill dipped his talons into the puncture wounds left behind by the creature’s bite. Ford hissed with pain, feeling the tender flesh ripping further. His hands gripped his thigh above where Bill’s hand was, but he didn’t immediately attempt to stop whatever it was the demon had planned. Bill’s eye curved in a smile, looking pleased, smug, even as his pupil constricted to a slit.

Ford’s muscles twitched futilely as Bill hooked his fingers, sharp claws rending the flesh anew. His breathing became ragged, the pulsing pain overriding all other senses. Bill would add more pressure, pushing deep – Ford biting his tongue around wretched noises – and then lighten up, wiggling his fingers playfully in slow, undulating movements. Somewhere just below the haze of pain was another sensation Ford couldn’t name; it was familiar, somehow, but he couldn’t place it.

Opening his eyes – when had he closed them? – Ford looked down to his wound, flabbergasted to find the tears in his skin knitting together, flesh becoming smooth and unblemished. He felt the blood rush out of his face when he saw Bill’s fingers still embedded in his now healed leg, his skin and muscle completed closed around the appendages. As if from far away, he could hear Bill chuckling, watched as those fingers twitched, felt them _inside_ his leg, every minute movement pulling at the skin surrounding them.

“B… Bill…” Ford attempted. He was feeling dizzy, brain arguing against what he was seeing, what his senses were telling him. It felt like he had been punched in the gut.

“Hmmm? Fordsy? Use your words.” The demon sounded sickly sweet, continuing to flick his fingers just the smallest amounts, taking care to keep the surface level of Ford’s leg intact even as his talons cut canals into the human’s muscles. Ford’s arms darted forward to grab onto Bill’s limb, to rip it out, quick, like a Band-Aid, but he found his movements abruptly constrained, his wrists shackled in bright glowing chains. Sensing his next move, Bill’s other hand gripped the back of Ford’s thigh, keeping him from tearing his leg free.

“St-stop, Bill!” Ford hated how shaky his voice came out, how the pain and nausea clouded his mind, reduced him to instinctive urges and twitches. But all he could concentrate on was the unnatural feeling of moving fingers inside his leg, the pain of claws sharpened to a dagger’s point slicing into the meat of his quadriceps. 

“I’m not doing ANYTHING until you ask nicely, Sixer.” To emphasize this, he dug his fingers in deeper, finally beginning to tear away from the skin that had grown onto them. The flesh had begun turning dark purple around him, and now that it was starting to part again, blood oozed freely around his hand. Ford let out a low groan, arms jerking in his chains, leg quivering in Bill’s grasp. 

“Bill, _please_ ,” Ford said, gasping around each syllable. It was followed by a shaky exhale as he felt Bill’s fingers finally still, slowly begin to drag out of the bloody mess of his thigh. The relief was short lived as the claws suddenly plunged back in, deeper than before, and then they began to curve, as though the demon was grabbing a handful of muscle and sinew to pull out. 

“Please WHAT? Didn’t I tell you to use your WORDS?” Bill tugged his arm, the action sparking fresh waves of pain and panic. Ford’s thoughts chased themselves in circles, imagining Bill ripping his thigh apart muscle by muscle, imagined his one-time muse abandoning him here, with a gnawed and mangled leg, to bleed out alone in the dark. 

“Please stop, Bill, stop, please,” Ford panted. For a heart stopping moment the human was sure Bill wasn’t going to comply, was going to keep demanding more and more of him until he was bled dry. Then the pressure stopped, and the demon yanked his fingers free completely. There was a dull platting sound of blood droplets against the sandy floor, soaking into the fine grains.

“See? Wasn’t that easy? You humans always make things more COMPLICATED than they need to be!” 

That sensation - both familiar and new, tingling and itchy – returned to his leg, and Ford could feel the pain receding. The chains around his wrists went slack but remained in place, and he immediately ran his fingers over his leg. No wounds, not even scar tissue to mark where Bill’s hand had been, though the flesh felt hotter. Ford looked up to meet Bill’s gaze. 

As he watched, a tongue wormed its way out from the bottom of Bill’s eye, long forked ends flicking in the air and then entwining – separately – around his blood soaked fingers. The thick muscle undulated as Bill lapped at the liquid, his eye fixated on Ford’s face. The effect was revolting, somehow more unnerving than when the demon transfigured his entire eye into a mouth. 

“Looking a little PALE there, Sixer! Is it the blood loss?” Bill teased. Logically, Ford knew Bill’s ability to speak didn’t depend on any physical orifices, but it was still disorienting to hear him talk while watching his tongue slide up and down up his fingers. “Or is it all just going ELSEWHERE?” The demon looked pointedly downwards on Ford’s body, made an expression like he was raising his nonexistence eyebrow.

“Bill, you _can’t_ be serious,” Ford scoffed. What part about this was supposed to have been erotic? His focus jumped to the tongue still coiling around inky black fingers, its rhythmic and swirling movements and-

No. No way in _hell_.

“What? This isn’t so different from what we’ve done in the MINDSCAPE, is it? I KNOW you liked it then...”

“This is _completely_ different! We’re not in the mindscape anymore!” It was ridiculous that Ford even had to clarify something like that. However, when he met Bill’s eye, the unreadable expression on the demon’s face made him feel like he was missing something, despite the being’s earlier insistence that they were on the same page. “Besides, that was before you betrayed my trust!” 

“Not really,” the demon said, shrugging. “I was TECHNICALLY betraying your trust the WHOLE TIME!”

There was a painful twist somewhere in his chest; it was hard to breathe around. Part of Ford was infuriated – how could Bill be so nonchalant about everything he’d done – but part of him was just repeating _well, what did you expect_?

“What DID you expect, Sixer?” Ford flinched bodily; he hated it when Bill responded to his thoughts. That long tongue – the color of bruised skin, splotches of sickly yellows and greens and deep purples – was slithering back beneath the all-seeing eye. Bill snapped his fingers, floating closer. “Hey, PAY ATTENTION!”

What _did_ he expect? It wasn’t a question Ford wanted to answer. An apology, remorse, an argument, an explanation? Maybe Bill could say that Ford had been dreaming, that Fiddleford had been lying, and that his wildest ambitions were still within reach. That years of his life weren’t gone, that his whole _life_ wasn’t gone. He thought again of watching the portal close, everything he was and everyone he knew blinking out of existence right in front of his eyes. 

Ford’s jaw clenched tighter, his eyes squeezed closed. Without warning, a familiar hand was in his hair, claws no longer cutting into him but gently scratching against his scalp. Bill’s other hand was against the side of his face, pads of his fingers stroking along his jawline. It was unbearable.

“Bill, I can’t-” Ford’s voice was ragged, and he couldn’t finish his thoughts, unsure what he was even protesting. The demon shushed him.

“I know what you need, Stanford,” Bill crooned. Ford was suddenly aware that he was still suspended in the air, though it felt less like floating and more like being cradled. “I know what you _want_.”

He did want. There were a million reasons why everything Bill was offering to him now was a bad idea. But that didn’t change the visceral reaction he had to the demon’s words, to his touch. There were more hands, sliding over his body, sending shivers across his skin even through thick layers of clothing. It was disgusting how much of him wanted this. Ford felt trapped, by his own desire, his own self-loathing, but he let himself float, become lulled by the hands that stroked against him.

With his eyes closed, he couldn’t see what the extra limbs Bill had conjured up looked like, but he could imagine them. Gods knew he’d seen them enough in the mindscape. He tried to picture them where they touched him, solid black as if cut from the shadows themselves. Long arms that bent at sickening angles, thin fingers capable of petting or rending his flesh at the demon’s whim. 

One in particular slid up the front of his chest, leaving his flesh tingling in its wake. It crawled up his neck, stroked along his jaw. A thumb traced the bow of his lips then pressed along his bottom lip, a silent entreaty. Wordlessly, Ford opened his mouth and two of those black fingers slipped inside, stroked against his tongue in languorous movements. He laved against them, with practiced motion swallowed the saliva that threatened to spill over his chin. They followed, brushing against the back of his throat, and Ford imagined the darkness inside him, filling him, going down, down-

And abruptly, his mind conjured images of those fingers hooking upwards, through his palate and skull, becoming tendrils that bored into his brain. Thick ropes of black – the color of the dark lattice of the night sky, the void, the nothingness that swallowed stars whole – burrowing into him, binding his mind. Ford’s eyes flew open, he jerked against touches that felt burning, diseased. One word – _no, no_ – muttered around the fingers in his mouth, and he tried to snap his jaw shut.

He looked to Bill, pleading, struggling to free himself. The demon was quiet, his expression blank. The fingers withdrew, and Ford breathed a sigh of relief before a hand clamped down across his lips. Pinpricks of pain blossomed against his jaw where the tips of claws broke his skin. All along his body, the touch of those hands turned to iron grips, digging in with bruising force, holding him still. 

“ **RELAX, Ford, try to ENJOY yourself.** ” Bill’s voice had distorted, the words deep and resonant, stretched like taffy. The world seemed to inverse, the dark cavern walls suddenly painted in vibrant and clashing colors, while Bill transformed into a pit of black punctuated by his golden, glowing eye. Worsening the nauseating effect, the rocky walls melted like wax and began to swirl together. Ford felt hot, too hot, and retched against the hand covering his mouth, the acid taste of bile burning his tongue and throat. 

“ **Think of this as a GOING AWAY present.** ”

Ford closed his eyes, but it felt like he was spinning, the hands holding him captive doing little to anchor him. He ground his molars together as he tried desperately not to heave again. His pulse throbbed at his temples. In unison, the limbs holding him let go, and he heard himself cry out as he fell. He opened his eyes, seeing nothing but darkness, and thought of the bottomless pit he and Fiddleford had discovered.

His descent slowed gradually. Ford wasn’t even sure how long he had been falling. A net caught him, and though his breath was knocked out of him, he suffered no real injuries. The man laid still for a moment, trying to even out his breathing, hoping to lessen the rapid beating of his heart. His thoughts were prickly and on edge, his muscles tense; waiting for Bill to appear again. 

Attempting to get a better idea of his surrounds, Ford turned his head, causing the material of the netting to press against his cheek. He had assumed it to be some kind of rope, but it felt… fleshy, organic, and as he contemplated this, it quivered underneath him. Disgusted, Ford grimaced, wishing there was a way he could distance himself from the web he’d landed on. He gripped two lines of the net, wiggling himself into a sitting position. Beneath him, the cords expanded and contracted, as if breathing.

An eye opened in the air in front of him, its yellow glow illuminating the trembling net that held him. Ford let out an undignified yelp, falling back. The eye scrunched up like it was grinning. More of them ripped open, haphazardly arranged in the darkness. Those slit pupils remained fixed on Ford, peering at him from every angle. 

“Feeling nice and RELAXED now, Fordsy?” Bill’s voice echoed, its origin indiscernible. ‘Relaxed’ might be the last adjective Ford would use to describe himself in this situation. Mocking laughter rang in the air, and Ford flushed, knowing it was aimed at him.

“This doesn’t seem like much of a fair fight, Cipher,” Ford said testily. He sat up straight again, six-fingered hands clenching around the fleshy ropes he still held. The taste of bile still burned, high in the back of his throat.

“Oh, we’re not FIGHTING - not yet! I already TOLD YOU, this is your PRESENT!” Lit up by the glow of Bill’s eyes, Ford felt like he was under a spotlight. 

His hands were damp, and for a moment Ford thought he was just sweating. Then there was a searing sensation across his palms, all along his fingers, most intense in the dips and creases of his hands. Ford let go of the death grip he had on the net, fingers spread wide. The burning continued, and he frantically wiped his palms against his clothes, trying to alleviate the sensation, remove whatever secretion was chewing away at his flesh.

The pain was blossoming in other parts of his body as the acid ate through his clothing. Crisscrossing lines of searing heat against his back, his legs – everywhere his weight rested on the netting. There was nowhere to turn to escape it, and the net was coiling tighter, curling in on itself to wrap around his limbs. Ford wrenched his arms against the trappings, feeling his shirt turning to shreds at his struggles. He was kicking with his legs too, only speeding up the inevitable, and the bitter stench of burnt cloth hung heavy in the air.

Was this how he was going to die, his flesh and muscle dissolved away? Bill had said this was a ‘going away’ present, after all. The demon was laughing again, that derisive jeering, like Ford was the biggest idiot Bill had ever seen, the biggest dupe. Like Ford was missing the most obvious explanation. He stopped his struggling. The netting gave once last squeeze around his limbs, his chest, and then fell slack, as though it had never surged to life in the first place.

Ford twisted his arms to inspect the intersecting strips of puffy, inflamed skin. What little remained of his shirt drifted off into the darkness at his movements. Whatever the webbing had been secreting wasn’t strong enough to produce open wounds, only a stinging pattern across his flesh that throbbed with every heartbeat. A hand suddenly raked down his back, the fingers turned so that blunt nails drug along his spine, inciting wildfires of pain wherever they cut across those raw lines. He hissed with pain. 

“Don’t _touch_ me, Bill – let me go!” His back arched in an attempt to escape the hand running up and down his spine. The eye before him narrowed, then curved upwards him a grin.

“You GOT IT, Sixer!” 

There was barely enough time for Ford to regret his word choice before he was falling again, this time for a blessedly shorter duration. The same strangely fleshy ropes caught him, though they had formed themselves into tendrils rather than netting, twining around his arms and legs while a thicker one curled around his waist. Their touch aggravated his singed skin.

“We BOTH know what you want, Fordsy.” The words sent Ford to struggling again, thrashing angrily. A sigh echoed. “Why don’t you just ADMIT IT, hmm? Not EVERYTHING has to be so difficult, you know.” 

Another eye opened, black with a glowing pupil, a surly red creeping out of the darkness around it, forming the familiar triangle but larger. Ford shuddered. He recognized this form – had seen it many times in both his dreams and nightmares. Yellow arms reached for him, plucked him free from tentacles, held him between two fingers to examine closely. His body felt hot as he was suddenly reminded of how naked he was.

A black tongue was slipping out between jagged teeth, slurping up the length of his body. The human tried to shove against it with his arms, only succeeding in coating himself in the demon’s tingling saliva. It was all so shamefully, painfully familiar, and it wasn’t just his mind that was reacting to the beast’s actions. Bill’s chuckle, dark and amused, echoed through the space around them.

And that was familiar too. Ford jerked with an abrupt realization that had Bill's eye curving upwards. This vague space, smoky and scattered lighting, unclear and blurry lines between reality – he wasn’t awake at all. How much of this had been real so far? Had he collapsed after the beast bit him? Had he dreamt the whole thing? Perhaps he was still at home, tossing and turning fitfully in anxious anticipation of his brother’s visit.

“I keep TELLING YOU, Sixer, REALITY is a SHAM – WORTHLESS! AWAKE, ASLEEP – YOU of all people show know BY NOW how MEANINGLESS the DISTINCTION is!” 

Even if he knew it – and Ford did, Bill had erased the lines between reality and fantasy years ago – the man felt some tension drain from his body. The forked tip of Bill’s tongue was flicking at his face and Ford opened his mouth, allowing the tapered ends to swirl inside his mouth, licking back against the monster. Bill repositioned him so Ford was resting against his fingers, the middle one rubbing lightly at his flesh. Hips twitching, Ford let out a muffled groan. Saliva slid out from the edges of his mouth as the demon’s tongue dipped deeper, stroking softly down his throat.

“Swallow.” The command echoed out, and Ford ground against Bill’s finger as he complied, feeling Bill deep in his throat as his muscles constricted around the monster’s organ. There was a low rumbling sound in the dreamscape and Bill withdrew from him, Ford leaning forward as if he could follow. A chuckle, and he frowned.

“Bill-”

“Look, Ford, normally I would be THRILLED to hear all the complaints and whining, but I’m REALLY not in the mood to HEAR IT! Just let me give you what you want. I said it was a gift, didn’t I?” Bill was so close that his eyelashes flicked across his flesh with every blink.

“I don’t want-”

“All RIGHT, that’s **IT**!” The top 2/3s of him were tilting, an eerie sight as it displayed the mismatching fangs that lined his edges, the two writhing tongues that resided in his lower mouth. And his hand was shifting too, his fingers wiggling to deposit Ford directly into his maw. Dying wouldn’t wake him up, Ford knew, and he couldn’t help but close his eyes, cry out, trying to curl himself to avoid being impaled.

The surface he landed on was wet and slick, surprisingly fleshy and hot considering the general pyramidal shape of the demon. A long, curving cut stretched the length of his arm, but there was no pain, just tingling all over his body as the liquid that served as Bill’s saliva dripped over him. The ground wriggled beneath him, undulating in overwhelming patterns, and he realized one of Bill’s tongues had caught him. The other was running along the wound on his arm, a pleased hum from the demon rattling in his chest.

Ford tried to shift backwards, sucked in a deep breath when he bumped into a tooth as long as his torso, its twisted tip prodding into the skin of his back. The tongue rolled back, slipping out from beneath him, leaving him sitting on Bill’s gums. It returned to roving against him almost immediately, pressing against his aching length, moving in ways that had his toes curling, his head thrown back, another fang scoring a shallow cut along his cheek.

His breathing was ragged, chest heaving, and the tongue laving him pulled away. His eyes opened, and Ford hooked both arms back around two of Bill’s fangs, leaning back into the sharp point at his spine. It was a dream, who cared if he got injured? And it was always guaranteed to excite Bill, the lying, silver tongued beast reacting like Ford’s blood was an aphrodisiac. Which, perhaps it was. The human spread his legs, knees bent, cock dripping precum.

“Bill, please.” It was becoming a repetitious refrain. The thick organ wiggled against his length. He groaned when it slithered away again. Why was Bill messing with him when he’d forced Ford into this position in the first place?

Bill’s second tongue had not ceased in its movements, however, and its tips dove into the wound on his arm, spreading beneath the parted flesh to open it wider. Then it too withdrew, sliding between his row of teeth and Ford’s back, goading the man forward. Ford was momentarily distracted, wondering at the dexterity of the muscle before following its rough prodding, reluctantly unhooking his arms and shuffling forward. The shoving continued, however, focused on his shoulders, and Ford’s cheeks burned as he maneuvered himself onto hands and knees.

The other tongue, slimy and black as a shadow, was immediately beneath him, worming between his arms, between his legs, lifting so that the majority of his weight was supported by the demon rather than his limbs. And the forked ends split, wrapped separately around the length of his cock to slither and slide in dizzying and complementary patterns. At his back, Bill’s spare tongue pressed him down, squashed him against its companion, surrounding his body in hot, spongy tissue, wet and slick.

Lifting his hands from Bill’s gums, Ford ran them along the sides of the tongue under him, and he even opened his mouth, pushing down his slight disgust to lick against the surface buoying him. A pleased sigh greeted his actions and he dug his blunt nails into the flesh, dragged his fingers up and down, earning himself a spastic quivering from the tongue, encouraging rumblings from the demon himself. The surface was strangely rough against his lips, Bill’s saliva thick and tasting vaguely caustic, like the edge of a battery.

And the organ at his back licked at the base of his neck and slowly traveled down his spine, twining over the bumps of his vertebrae. One of its tips slipped between his legs, and an embarrassed flush swept over his skin as it pressed against his entrance. But the mortification pooling in his stomach didn’t stop him from leaning back into the tongue as it breached him, thrust shallowly inside him before withdrawing. The one supporting his weight began rolling in waves along the front of his body, and his hips bucked against the muscle.

The tentacle like tip of Bill’s tongue surged deeper and deeper inside him, unnervingly prehensile and mobile. In fact, everything about this was unsettling, even revolting, but it was easy to ignore, let his eyes slip shut and enjoy the overwhelming sensations lapping at this skin, slamming deep inside him. Ford had always been a fan of weird anyway. He could feel himself getting closer, heat and tension coiling low in his gut, hips constantly thrusting against Bill’s tongue, fingers still scratching along the ridged edges of the black organ. 

“Ah, Bill,” he practically sighed, clutching his monster’s tongue tight, coming all over the slick surface. The one inside him withdrew, leaving him empty, but both of the organs coiled around every inch of his body.

“See how much NICER things can be when you just LISTEN to me?” The demon had been blessedly silent so far, and Ford frowned at his words, eyes closed, but didn’t otherwise move. It felt gross but kind of nice to have Bill’s tongues wrapped around him tight, warm and flexible and dripping. Bill went quiet again and Ford relaxed. The reality of his situation was starting to creep in again, and in all honestly, the human didn’t want to acknowledge it. He could stay here a little while longer, couldn’t he?

All at once, Bill’s tongues surged to life, tossed him roughly. Ford’s eyes flew open and he watched as the cavernous maw opened, and suddenly he was being spat out into the darkness.

“Bill!” He landed with a rough thud, on his back somehow, the impact forcing his eyes shut. When he looked again, Ford could see the sky dotted and glowing with countless stars. Not the eternally wheeling universe of his mindscape, but the familiar nightscape of Gravity Falls. There was soft, dark grass beneath him, tickling against the back of his neck. And lying against his side was a figure right out of his dreams, the human skin Bill had worn for him just a time or two.

“You know,” the demon said, using a finger to trace an unknown pattern against his flesh. “You don’t HAVE to be miserable.”

Ford leveled a withering glare at his former muse. “ _You’re_ the reason I’m miserable, Bill. You ruined everything!” 

The blond scoffed. “Not ENTIRELY!” A snap, and something white appeared in the periphery of Ford’s sight. He turned to peer at it, the blades of grass prickling his cheek. A door. It swung open, revealing Fiddleford falling out of the portal, revealing Bill cackling, revealing sleepless, paranoid nights. It slammed shut and went up in flames, and Ford jerked, panicked, struggled against Bill’s weight.

“Relax, Sixer, I didn’t DO anything – not YET!” The lithe form shifted to straddle him, hands on his shoulders. “But I COULD! You don’t WANT to have been BETRAYED by your _blessed muse._ ” Ford flushed and squirmed. “I could make that all GO AWAY! No more HURT FEELINGS, no more NIGHT TERRORS – just YOU and ME, like the good old days!” Bill leaned in, his lips brushing against Ford’s. “There was a time you WANTED that portal to open, for us to share a dimension. We still can!”

Bill’s words were like a viper’s bite, sharply cutting into his flesh, fever-hot with poison, and just as fatal. It was true, it was all true, and it opened a chasm in Ford that he wasn’t sure could ever close again. Burn away the truth, forget it, go back to the last time he’d felt truly happy, valued by someone worthwhile. He craned forward, removed the distance between himself and Bill, everything unnaturally soft and gentle.

“I can’t, Bill.” His friends. His family. His entire world. He couldn’t let Bill destroy everything.

“Isn’t it time you were SELFISH for a change, Stanford? Why should YOU always come last? Your wants are just as important as the REST of your world’s – more so, even, to me.” Smooth as honey, as easy to swallow. There was a time he would have lapped it all up, and even now the demon’s words sent a titillating shiver up his spine, a spreading warmth in his chest. Ford shook his head again, not trusting what would come out of his mouth.

Bill sighed, and for a brief moment actually looked regretful, maybe even remorseful. It felt like an end, like the last time, and Ford took the chance to study his former muse, lit by the soft back glow of night. The small furrow of his brow, the pout of his lips, the long column of his throat. Strangely, Ford thought he preferred Bill’s triangular form. The demon shrugged, his usual easy smile split across his face.

“I knew you’d say no,” he murmured, replying to the man’s unspoken rejection. Dark fog began swirling at the edges of Ford’s mindscape. Bill pressed another chaste kiss against him. “Sweet dreams, Fordsy!”

Ford’s eyes slid shut again, and the last sensation he remembered before he awoke again was Bill’s weight against his hips, his mouth moving alongside his own.


End file.
